Join author and educator Tim Cloward (The City that Killed the President) at Deep Vellum Books in Dallas for a tribute reading of Robert Trammell’s Jack Ruby & the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas.
Spectacular, genre-defying stories, including the reimagining of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder as an attempt to create generation-defining performance art.
What really (might have) happened when Jack Ruby, nightclub owner, brass knuckle-slinger, and inveterate fan of Corbusier, decided to kill the killer of JFK? In this first-ever trade publication of Bob Trammell’s work, Jack Ruby mythos loops between fact, fiction, and spectacle to satirize Dallas’ place on the world stage. Jack Ruby & The Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas caricaturizes everyone from Bob Thornton to Joseph Beuys; fodder for JFK conspiracy theorists, innuendo-readers, ingenious speculators, and pursuers of The Truth About Dallas At Large.
With an introduction by Ben Fountain and afterword by David Searcy, this volume also includes Trammell’s “Quiet Man” story cycle from over the course of his long, countercultural writing career, lamenting a generation that lost much by embarking on a search for themselves in a city—and world—unwilling to support its brightest artists.
Robert Trammell, author of numerous books of poetry and stories, was a legendary underground writer in Dallas, and founded the literary nonprofit WordSpace
Tim Cloward is a writer/educator who lives in Dallas, Texas. He holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetic Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. The founder of the poetry/performance troupe Dancing Tongue, he has also worked with Poetry Circus and Question Authority, both acclaimed multi-disciplinary performance ensembles. A prominent arts organizer, he spent a decade as a contributor/programmer for the North Texas Literary organization, WordSpace. He currently teaches a Theory of Knowledge class at Uplift Atlas Academy, where he is helping establish an International Baccalaureate program for underserved urban students. He is married to singer/artist/poet Lisa Huffaker.